It was a year of record-breaking cases, led by a handful of extraordinary multibillion-pound disputes between some of Russia’s richest men. Some of the Bar’s top names pocketed huge fees, including a final payday of almost £8 million for Lord Sumption, Britain’s top commercial barrister before becoming a judge at the Supreme Court.

But, aside from the high fees of the elite commercial Queen’s Counsels, the barristers’ profession is feeling the squeeze, according to new research.

Long isolated in the leafy Inns of Court, barristers’ chambers are no longer immune from the business pressures affecting the rest of the legal